The Insider’s Startup Guide to Shanghai

A startup guide to Shanghai can help budding entrepreneurs in their challenging journey.

Shanghai’s startup ecosystem is maturing and starting to look like an entrepreneur’s heaven. Money is getting thrown at the innovative initiatives while the government is willing to reimburse venture capitalists for their loss.

Want-entrepeneurs, incubators and co-working spaces are growing like mushrooms. Markets are popping, craftsmanship is suddenly vintage and cool, and being an “entrepreneur” is the dopest job you can wish for in this booming city lately.

Even if it means everything at the same time, it takes much more than that to develop a mature startup ecosystem.

To help you in your entrepreneurial efforts in the city, we’ll give you a startup guide to Shanghai. We have compiled a list of resources beyond co-working spaces and VC funds we thought you might need.

This guide is tailored to foreign founders of Chinese and foreign companies alike. We have curated the support most available to you, particularly on the investment side because we know it’s tough for foreign founders to raise purely Chinese funds.

Before we proceed, ask yourself the following questions in order to find out which support do you actually need.

1. What’s the founding team nationality, core competence, and commitment?

2. What’s your company’s stage?

3. What are your immediate needs?

4. What do you want to achieve in the next six months?

Now that you have answered these questions, here’s a curated list of support for foreign entrepreneurs in Shanghai.

Rachel has lived in China for 7 years and has been involved in the Shanghai startup ecosystem for 3 years. She’s the co-founder of Lihaoma and managing member of Startup Grind Shanghai chapter. She’s also an aalumnus of Chinaccelrator and program leader of the entrepreneurship program of Shanghai University UTSEUS.

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Published by Rose Tornandeso

Rose Tornandeso is a freelance writer from Manila, Philippines. She spends her time as the Editor and Content Creator for NextStep Hub. When she's not chasing deadlines, she visits art galleries, writes fictions, and plays legos with her son.

NextStep Hub is curating a wide variety of resources, tips, tools for entrepreneurs, start up and managers to help you succeed in Asia, China and across the globe. We want to help you take advantage of all the latest local and regional digital tools to help you amplify your message and brand in the region.